Cigarettes and Truckstops
by walkthatlonesomevalley
Summary: Two years after high school Karma drives through the desert to meet Amy in Vegas. On occasion she jots down her thoughts as she travels back and forth to meet her love.


*karmy: inspired by listening to lindi ortega songs*

*set sometime after the show but with the knowledge of what has happened since 2b started up again*

*karma is making her journeys to and from amy who is waiting for her in vegas. occasionally she stops on the road to jot down a few thoughts for amy to read since she can't stop thinking about her anyway and she doesn't want to*

 **Cigarettes and Truckstops**

 **Letter One:**

Amy,

It's been a long time since I've seen you. I can't wait anymore. Sometimes I wish things could go back. I wish we could be in high school again. I wish I never hurt you. I wish none of that stuff happened. But I guess if none of that happened we couldn't have our sweet times like this. We couldn't be where we are with one another. I couldn't have woken up to you like I did before and am doing again in this desert so vast and serene.

The wind blows warm against my skin as I drive. The top is down. My convertible is driving quick because even my foot is impatient and trying to get to you. The faster I drive through this desert the sooner I can hold you and tell you again how much I love you despite it all.

I don't mind the heat. The heat is good, it reminds me of my time with you. I feel trapped in it but at the same time I feel that I can never get enough, that there's too much for just me and I don't deserve to ever feel full of you. Like the heat, you are everywhere and nowhere, inside of me and out. Right now I am covered in heat but soon it will be winter again. It's all painfully familiar but I can't explain that any better so I'll stop trying to make it have sense.

The last time we met it was just like this. Do you remember?

The last time we met it was in summer and I'd literally been dreaming of you.

I'd been teaching private Music Lessons to Elementary-aged kids. They were gifted young students who could already play these complicated instruments, in some cases they were already better than I ever could become. They learned quickly, maybe even before they knew how to speak the names of some of the songs I had them play. They were quiet and sweet but so fucking talented it hurt. I had so much time with them. So much time in this whole different world. I constantly thought about you though. What would Amy think of me here? What would Amy say about this life of mine? My thoughts were all about you and how you were doing out there and if you'd even be missing me at all...

I talked to you. Yeah, barely... We had facebook. You would text me every so often to tell me about your roommate or your new house or all the people you went to school with out there in California so far away.

Occasionally I would call but our conversations just wouldn't feel right. They'd be shorter. I'd feel the distance through the phone. I could almost see it, this static shimmering life-line spanning all the way from Austin and over to you. It was just like when we were kids and we used those soup cans and that fish line to make phones and hide round corners and tell secrets. It was much more intense though. Less intimate. It hurt not to hear you completely, to know you. Then our connection would drop. As usual with us, it was emotional. There'd be a pause and I'd feel that you weren't with me anymore. I'd feel that you were gone, elsewhere.

And that did make me scared. You didn't know it yet but it did.

There was distance, Amy. So much distance. But I thought you wanted it that way so I kept it as long as I could. I kept it all inside, how much I wished to call you all the time, how much I knew I'd be happier if I were with you… How much I was sure that you were better off far away where I couldn't screw up your whole life and accidentally manipulate you into being whatever it was I thought you wanted to be, whatever it was you let me think.

God, it's hard to explain...

Seeing you again after that? Meeting like that after so much silence and time?

My body aches now when I think about it at night, at home, alone, without you. My body aches in ways it never used to. And it's all for you, because of you. You have me crawling somehow, it's almost like we've reversed roles now that we're older and both wise.

Even now, in this car, on my way to you, I can feel you waking up, strolling across your floor barely dressed. I can feel you thinking about me from hundreds of miles away with barefeet and sleepy eyes and your sexy Amy morning hair. I can feel you thinking of me and knowing that I'm with you even far away.

You validated that in me, I guess. You made me sure of you. For years and years and years. You're my only true thing.

For at least a year I didn't know you. For at least a year we were estranged and separate. I'd never lie to you about it now. It was the loneliest year of my life, the year I'd most like to take back and change. But it was probably the most important year I ever lived. I needed to leave you alone and go without you to understand how much you really meant to me and how irreplaceable and intrinsic you will always be to my life, to me. Even if I try to let you be without me it breaks me inside. And that is what I had done. Before knowing, that is...

If I knew you still wanted me around I'd have driven to you sooner.

If I knew you were missing me? I'd have left that night and followed you out, just an hour after you left Austin, for your big new life in LA, I would've ran to you if necessary, I would've backpacked through this same desert, wild, like Cheryl Strayed in search of true meaning after losing her life, her only love. For her it was her mother. For me it's you and always will be. You mean more to me than anyone. You always will.

When you broke up with Reagan I didn't know about it. You never said… I found out from Lauren. She pm'd me on Facebook and asked what I was doing about your birthday present because she didn't want to do the same thing. Her first message was something to the effect of, "What are you getting for Amy? I really want to get her something she'd like. You can't laugh. _**What with Reagan and everything that's happened**_ , I just really want to do something nice for Amy even though she's a pain."

My heart dropped. I had to pause and rewind. I felt my mind stutter and my heart gallop to race for you.

It was a red flag and I leaped forward to clasp it and know it was real. By then I'd thought for sure I had lost you. And I knew it was all my fault. It definitely wasn't yours…

I hated to know it but I wanted a red flag so I could run to you, I needed a reason. Here I was, all alone, in Austin… Trying to help support my family. Trying to do something good, anything good, and be good to you, and just help.

Some causes just feel so fucking lost.

Driving now in the heat though, I remember it all, how lost I felt then, how alone. You were there. I just didn't know.

When you first brought up LA I just thought, _**this is it… This is the end…**_

I thought you'd marry her. Trade me in for something better.

You couldn't possibly need me anymore. I thought you were done with us. I really did and that broke me.

'Cause fuck did I ever need you. I needed you so much it killed me inside.

That first meeting in the lobby of that fancy resort-like hotel outside of Vegas?

It was accidental almost. At first, I just felt strange. Meeting you in such a nice place after so much time had gone by and so few words? I was more nervous than you'll ever know.

I snuck up beside you at the help desk and as soon as you noticed me you took my hand forcefully like you'd meant the whole year to have been holding it. You held my hand so tight, it seemed you'd rather be holding me entirely at the time, I remember it like it was yesterday and I think about it often, too often, it comforts me.

After that your eyes were mine again. Your breath was touching me again as you held me right there in the lobby after checking in. All that lost time meant more to me then somehow. I cried because I couldn't help it. I was so happy to be with you. My face hurt, you made me smile so much. All you had to do was exist again, just be alive and in my space.

You've always been my home and I felt that again in an instant. I dunno how you do it but you always do.

You took me up to the room and we dropped my stuff off, remember? I stood in front of the bed and smiled. For whatever reason, most likely convenience, you had only booked one and I was happy for that because it meant no matter what you weren't scared of me.

We were both nervous and we stood in that empty room not sure of what to say.

We left the hotel right after and watched a movie together. That was the first sign of distance. The old us would never feel a need to make plans. The old us would be fine doing anything together without a set schedule or a firm plan. Instead we were both quieter than usual and softer in some way. It almost felt like we were back in high school again and on a first date.

Two seconds into the previews I couldn't help it, I was so overwhelmed just knowing I was with you again. I remember I shifted in my seat and laid my head on your shoulder. I held one hand at your neck and kept my other hand warm inside yours. I was weeping. I was so happy. I was crying because I was happy and you knew. You just felt so good I needed to be touching more of you somehow.

I would've been happy that day if we didn't go out at all and just laid together on that hotel bed until we both fell asleep in each other's arms like so many other times.

I don't think I even watched that movie at all. I was too busy remembering you, loving you.

You squeezed my hand and pulled me in to hug you closer. When you realized I was crying you whispered in my ear, _**"I missed you so much,"**_ stopping my heart before setting it off. __I felt your heart beating against my ear through your chest. Hope and happiness flowed through me like liquid. And that's all I could feel or think for the rest of the stupid thing just holding you so quiet and in the dark with my hand in yours and my body on yours and this world of unspoken distance between us that I just wanted to crush or erase or take-back somehow.

It was heaven-sent, that meeting. I'm not a very religious person. I'm spiritual but you know I don't follow set rules. You felt like heaven though. That felt like a moment I'd like to stay in for possibly ever.

I'd gone an entire year without you but the second I could get close enough I felt connected to you again, so connected it ached in every muscle, every fiber, and every limb. I felt you everywhere, even when we weren't touching. I never wanted to leave you again and when I actually did I was hurt by life for dealing us so much pain over the past several years.

Without you I'm not alive like that. Even now, just knowing I'm nearing you I can feel the life returning to me, the energy filling me up. I can feel you creeping inside of me and waking me up.

 **Letter Two:**

The black road stretches out for miles upon miles out here. I'm not counting though, it's impossible to count. Out here I always get to feeling like this tiny speck in the middle of the gigantic desert. This drive really reminds me how insignificant I am. And yet… With you waiting? It all feels important. Too important for words.

The days have been going by so slowly back at home. The days without you are agony. I hate waiting for your calls and your emails. I hate waiting. I just want to have you. I want you to be mine again like before.

I know that's a selfish way to think. But when I know I could be waking up with you in my arms, waking up to you every morning and kissing you all the day long?

This desert makes me know that our lives are too short for this. I don't think I can take another two years away.

I like this wake-up-call though. I crave the reminder that I've been loved and I will be loved even more. For you I'd wait forever. I know that now.

My kids can make me smile but nothing gets to me like you do. I've helped enough to get my parents their house back but I'd take it all back for you and I hate how true that is but it is true, I love you too much, I'd rather be with you.

I stop in a nearly abandoned desert town, fill my tank and try to control myself. The closer I get the more shaky I become. Even trying to put the nozzle into the tank I nearly missed and scraped the sides before resting it in comfortably. A man asked me for change and I was so frazzled I jumped.

I drove to a taco bell to use the bathroom. The second I got outside the sun hit me again and I realized my eyes really hurt. I was wearing dark sunglasses but they barely shielded me somehow. A tall man offered me a cigarette and I hung-out with him on the wall and talked to him about his girlfriend and their cute puppy who were both in the car next to mine. His girlfriend had a guitar and I told him I could play. I took the guitar and played a low-key Blackbird. We talked and laughed a bit and then they asked where I was going. All I could think about was you. I was polite but the rest of the convo mainly consisted of me trying to find a way out without being a jerk.

I have this whole sense of urgency when it comes to you. I'm in a constant state of fear when you're not around. I think crazy thoughts like, what if you died…

Morbid. Ridiculous. Everyone dies but… I do, I think about it a lot. What if you died out there or what if I died out here. What if we missed each other again but this time forever?

It's a bad way to be. I know…

Driving after that, I felt secure but, I felt myself thinning. I was almost at your feet and that did something to me physically. So often I've felt stretched like I have to somehow hold my breath from Austin to your door. It's like the air is thinning and I'm becoming weak. And I need to get to you. I need to get to you so bad.

When I finally reached Vegas again I was so happy I could cry. I sort of did, but that's not important. What's important is that I found you.

Romantic that you are, you booked the same hotel. I let valet take my car. I'm not rich but I didn't care, plus I have that job now, that real job. I just needed you in my arms, I needed you right away. I was so close I felt myself ready to fall.

When my eyes saw you, when I found you again?

We raced to each other and I fell. You had me again. You had me and I could breathe.

I felt your arms holding me tight, your breath in my hair, your soft smile on my cheek. I felt everything so strong. Every little thing about you that I'd always taken for granted. I felt it again and needed you more.

"I love you," you whispered.

And I knew we'd be okay.

"I love you too," I said, finding strength to feel you again. "I love you too," I couldn't stop myself saying it again.

You laughed and lifted me up off the ground.

I laughed too but stopped you, holding at your neck with my hand and wishing I could stop myself from being so weak inside, so very lost when I'm away from you.

For a week we had heaven. For a week we got to love and be us again only better.

But now I'm back in the desert and driving home. I'm going back to my house and my job. I'm going back to the life I wish still had you in it. You're learning to be all the things you've always dreamed you could be. Despite it all, I love that.

And I already miss you…

But it's okay…

The desert stretches out before me and I remind myself that I'll be with you soon, that I'll be holding you again soon. We're both doing all the things we need and want. We both know in time we'll be together again.

Patience. I tell myself. Patience.

But I write to you anyway, and all the time, just like this. It's the only way I can feel sane given the circumstance.

Truth is I'd rather be kissing you, we both know that's true.

All we could do was touch. All we needed to do was be but we both couldn't stop kissing.

Leaving you felt cruel.

Driving home through the heat. Driving home without you by my side in my car. Driving home to a place where we used to both be.

All I could do was think about seeing you again soon.

That's all I can ever do.

I miss you already. I miss you too much.

You're my everything. You always have been.

Please, don't ever forget…

xoxo


End file.
